Altered
by The Mad Hatteras
Summary: You never know what you'll find when you arrive at a call, and people need rescuing. A one-shot hurt/comfort story, with a little slapstick thrown in for fun. Casey/Dawson, with Casey/Severide friendship. Rated T primarily because I use big words, and because I want my readers to have an idea of who the Three Stooges are, but no other reason. Enjoy!


Altered

A/N: This is a little fic bug that's been running around in my mind since being exposed to this most interesting of injuries, possibly through my place of employment, though I wouldn't swear to that in a court of law. ;) There's always room for more Casey/Dawson hurt/comfort in the universe, right? And a little slapstick thrown in for good measure. A one-shot, for your entertainment and (hopefully) enjoyment!

The alarm sounded, and we were back on the truck. Third time this shift. The first two weren't all that intense… a small kitchen fire that the owner extinguished before we arrived, and a child with his foot stuck in the fork of a tree he had been climbing. All in a day's work. But this call wouldn't be as simple… we were the third company to be called in. The original call was a result of a gas leak at a factory, but the gas had combusted, and fires were popping up all over the facility. The fire doors, meant to protect workers from the fire spreading, had inordinately trapped them in some key areas, which were then subject to explosions, as the combustion circulated throughout the plant.

My team began assisting the rescue squads by knocking down doors and cutting holes in the aluminum siding of the warehouse, to allow easier rescue of workers from the various areas. We had only heard one more explosion, on the far side of the building, since we arrived. The work was going quickly and smoothly, considering the number of departments working together. Shay and Dawson were just across the driveway, where they had set up triage. I was proud of Dawson, as the Chief had put her in charge, for the second time, of a pretty big response. She worked well under pressure, and she and Shay worked with long-practiced coordination as they treated the more critical victims.

"Casey, we've got another door blocked," I heard Hermann's voice crackle through my radio. He gave his location, and I headed toward them. A function of poor housekeeping and probably an attempt at security, some of the viable exits had been found barred and locked, and then with heavy cabinets or machinery on the other side once they were opened. I joined my team and gave orders to manage the work, and the doors came open. But before we could even start moving the cabinetry, a foul greenish smoke started filtering out around the openings.

"Masks on!" I ordered my team, and everyone quickly took action. Two of the guys easily moved a wooden self-standing cabinet, and tossed it to the side. Several workers quickly came tumbling out. I say tumbling, because they appeared to be half-dazed, and half in a melee of some sort. Six or seven men stumbled out, falling on top of each other, but throwing punches in spite of the chaos. Two of my guys went in to clear the room of other potential victims, while Hermann and I tried to pull the tangle of humanity apart.

What transpired next must have looked like a strange episode of the Three Stooges. These men were clearly altered from whatever gas they had been inhaling. They appeared startled and disoriented, but were still swinging at whatever was in front of them. So I quickly told Hermann to remove helmets and masks (we had wrestled them far enough away from the dangerous gas) so as not to confuse them further. However, one guy took Hermann's helmet off for him with a crazy, misdirected swing. I had a guy suddenly trying to pull me down by the collar of my coat, as I was turning to pull Hermann's attacker off of him. Hermann easily swatted down the guy on my collar, who now had another guy grabbing him by the ankles. And just as I thought we almost had them settled, Hermann's guy came out of nowhere with a right hook square on the side of my face – a powerful punch for such a disoriented guy – and a hit that sent my head and neck snapping to the side. I might have stayed on my feet, but my guy's ankle-tackler was underneath me, so I landed on top of him. By the time the dust settled, Hermann was sitting on top of the guy who had punched me, my left ear was ringing, I could taste blood, and I couldn't see straight, but I could make out Severide and Mills approaching quickly.

Their voices were muffled and mixed with the ringing, but I heard Hermann giving his version of what had just happened. I couldn't make it all out, but I think he said something about bad slapstick comedy. Mills started helping Hermann manage the guys on the ground. Severide came over to help me up, and thankfully he held on, because I wasn't going to stay upright for long on my own. The ringing in my ear was joined by an incredible shooting pain, radiating up to my temple and down the side of my neck. Along with the taste of blood in my mouth, I felt the awful uncomfortable feeling of a slight head injury, where you feel like you're about to throw up… but I knew enough to fight it back down, or Shay and Dawson would have me waiting in line for a head CT for the rest of the day. Kelly started talking, but whatever he was saying sounded like amplified ringing in my left ear, accompanied by amplified pain. I found myself instinctively reaching up and pushing his face away… I just wanted the noise to stop. He looked at me strangely, and when I could focus long enough, I put a finger to my lips to indicate he should speak quietly, then pointed to my right ear. He smiled slightly, then leaned to my right side.

"Sorry, Casey. Get your bell rung?" Severide said in a low tone of voice.

"Don't say 'ring' right now, please…" I whispered. My voice sounded strange and almost disembodied, but it made my left ear ring strangely from the inside of my head, too. I glanced around to see we were standing by a tree, though my vision still didn't want to stay in clear focus.

Severide chuckled gently. "Listen, Hermann says you took quite a hit. I can take you over to Shay and Dawson," I shook my head, but it just made the world start spinning again.

"Or," Severide continued, as his grip on me stayed firm, "we can go back to the truck and I'll check you out. But I make no promises that we won't get caught, and if you puke or pass out on me, Shay and Dawson can have you."

I took a steadying breath, and met his eyes with as much confidence as I could muster. "Let's go," I said quietly, nodding toward the Squad 3 truck.

Kelly guided me to the passenger side of Squad 3's rig, and I sat in the footwell of the front door. I took a steadying breath, and silently prayed for the ringing in my ear to decrease in volume. I had taken hits enough times in my life to know what was going on with my head at the moment, but this was the first time I remember the ringing accompanying the pain, and the two being so directly tied to each other.

Kelly had set down his helmet and taken off his work gloves. He then stood in front of me, held up his bare hands as if in surrender, and apologized in advance for any pain he might cause me, and promised he'd be quick.

"I can already see the bruising on the left side of your face, so I'm gonna guess that's where you got hit," he said only a little sarcastically. Then his expression became a little quizzical. "Matt, can you close your mouth?" I thought I had been, and I put my lips together.

"No, I mean bite down. Your jaw." As soon as Kelly said the words, a wave of panic came over me, and I made a small attempt to put my teeth together. The pain that shot through my head almost took the wind out of me.

"It's okay, it's okay," Kelly reassured, as he could see my breathing pick up, with the pain and the panic that started to set in. "You probably just dislocated your jaw. Here, this might feel like crap, but just trust me…" and he gently put his palms on either side of my face, and his fingers gently palpated the joint.

"Yep, that's what it feels like. It hurts, but it's not broken." With his hands in the same place, his thumbs pressed across my cheekbones. It was uncomfortable on the left side, but not the sharp pain like I was feeling in my jaw.

"No breaks, I don't think. Are you bleeding?" he asked, and I nodded, spitting red saliva onto the ground next to me as if to prove the point. He shook his head slightly, and then reached down into a pocket on the leg of his trousers to retrieve a pair of latex gloves.

"Is the ringing getting any better?" he asked.

"A little," I responded quietly. "It gets worse with loud noises, and the pain seems to get worse when the ringing does."

"Alright, let me see if…" as he reached toward my face again, Kelly was interrupted by the slightly panicked voice of a certain paramedic to my right.

"What's wrong with Casey?" Dawson came toward us at a jog.

"I got this, Dawson, he's okay…"

"Right, that's why I just saw you put latex on. Hermann said he got punched by one of those tweaked out workers…" she trailed off as she got her first look at the left side of my face.

"Ahh, Matt…" her fingers gently glided over what I could only assume were the bruises forming on my cheek.

"It's okay," I tried to reassure her, even as I betrayed myself with a wince. I didn't even recover from the grimace, and she had a fresh pair of gloves on. In seconds, her hands ghosted over my face, and with the gentlest touches she could manage, she had identified what Severide had.

"No fractures, but it feels like you dislocated your TM joint. How bad is the pain?" she asked me, her face a mix of serious all-business, and endearing concern. "On a scale of one to ten?"

"About a 6. It was at an 8 earlier, but it's a little better now. But my ear is still ringing," I told her honestly. Severide told her what I'd said about the pain and the ringing going together.

"Well, if it's just a slight dislocation, I can probably pop it. But if the muscles are too tight, we'll have to take you in." I know my face expressed concern at this latter option. "Or I could just let Kelly punch you in the face in the other direction," she teased.

"You try it. I trust you," I told her, locking eyes with her to let her know how much I meant what I was saying.

"Come on, then," she motioned, leading us back to the ambulance. Since my head had stopped spinning as much as it was earlier, I could now see that the scene was mostly in clean-up mode. It appeared the gas leak had been stopped by the gas company, and the factory had been evacuated, workers treated, and fires extinguished.

Gabriella led me to the ambulance, and had me sit in the back, on one of the benches where she would normally ride with a patient. I watched as she grabbed a roll of gauze and began to wrap each of her thumbs in it. Then she turned to me.

"Okay, Matt, here's what we're going to do. I want you to rest your head against the wall. I'm going to put my thumbs in your mouth, to brace against the inside of your TM joint. Then I'm going to use my hands to massage the muscles on the outside, to get them to release. I need you to breathe through your nose, and just close your eyes and relax."

I smiled a little at her, and met her eyes so she knew I trusted her. "Okay," I said quietly, and rested my head back. She began her work, and I concentrated on breathing and relaxing. I found myself imagining a much more intimate setting, allowing Gabriella to share her massage skills with me, and…

BAM! There was a sudden motion that felt as if I had been hit again, as my jaw popped loudly, and painfully, back into its socket. I gasped and my eyes flew open. Gabby had quickly moved her hands out of my mouth and under my jaw, gently stroking the muscles as if to relax them again. I didn't know what I had expected to happen, but I wasn't expecting that.

"What the…"

"Sorry, Casey. If I would have told you what I was gonna do, you would have tensed, and it wouldn't have worked. But… it worked. You're gonna need to ice it and take it easy for a while… no bagels, got it?"

I tentatively moved my jaw up and down. It didn't feel great, but the shooting pain had turned into a dull throb. Gabby handed me an ice pack, holding it to my cheek for me. We found ourselves looking into each other's eyes again. That had been happening a lot lately. She smiled a slight grin.

"Sorry…"she whispered.

I grinned. "I forgive you. You fixed me."

A/N: Please Review… I have quickly learned it is the author's life-blood! I know I said this was a one-shot… for those of you following my other CF fic, Hope, I'm still going… I just have to get these random ideas out of my head to make room for continuing the saga. That said, I *could* be talked into continuing another chappie or two on this one… but somebody's gotta throw me a plot bone… where would I go? Especially when I tied it up with such a neat little ribbon? Review, and share your ideas with me! -MH


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